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Yeshivas' Escape from Europe: 1940 the JEWISH QBSERVER

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Yeshivas' Escape from Europe: 1940 the JEWISH QBSERVER VOLUME IX, NUMBER 3 SIVAN 5733 / MAY 1973 fHE FIFTY CENTS REB AHARON KOTLER ~"lT Ten Years After His Passing ItsIts surviV!tl.. not"'" education. MOMENT OF TRUTH For Federations fS' Torah Education Yeshivas' Escape from Europe: 1940 THE JEWISH QBSERVER in this issue ... REB AHARON KOTLE;l. '"lT, TEN YEARS AFTER HIS PASSING, Shaul Kagan ............ 3 MOMENT OF TRUTH: FOR TORAH EDUCATION/ FoR THE FEDERATIONS, N isson Wolpin 14 ESCAPE FROM EUROPE; A CHRONICLE OF MIRACLES, Chabn Shapiro 20 THE JEWISH OBSERVER is published LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 25 monthly, except July and August, by the Agudath Israel of America, 5 Beekman Street, New York. New York 10038. Second class postage paid at New York, N. Y. Subscription: $5.00 per year; Two years, $850; Three years, $12.00; outside of the United States, $6.00 per year. Single copy, fifty cents. Printed in the U.S.A. LAST TIME AT THIS REDUCTION! RABBI NISSON WOLPIN Editor THE JEWISH OBSERVER 5 Beekman Street I New York, N. Y. 10038 Editorial Board DR. ERNEST L. BODENHEIMER D NEW SUBSCRIPTION: $5 - I ye.r of J.O. Chainnan Snhract S2 -·- introductory offer: Send $3 only! RABBI NATHAN BULMAN D RENEWAL: $15 value, for 3 years of J.O. RABBI JOSEPH ELIAS Subtract S3 --- Introductory offer: Send $12 only! JOSEPH FRIEDENSON RABBI YAAKOV JACOBS 0 GIFT: S5 - l year; $8.50, 2 yrs.; $12, 3 yrs. of ].0. RABBI MOSHE SHERER Send Afagazine to: Send Gift to: THE JEWISH OBSERVER does not Name ..... l\1a1ne .... assume responsibility for the Address...... Address.... Kashrus of any product or service advertised in its pages, City...... ..... Stute ........... Zip .... City... ,. .... State ............. Zip .. D Enclosed: $ .... D En«losed: $ .. MAY 1973 VOL, IX, No. 3 D Bill nte: $ ..... D Bill me: $ ..... ~@; Shaul Kagan REB AHARON KOTLER '"lT Ten Years After His Passing A DECADE: A MOMENT IN TIME, AND AN ETERNITY. To those who knew the Rosh Y cshiva he seems at once to have been with us yesterday, and to have been gone for an immeasurable span. His words remain our constant companions-"The Rosh Yeshiva said-"-"The Rosh Yeshiva held-." The freshness of his memory does not diminish with the passage of years. Transcending the immediacy of his teachings and of the photograph carried in his talmidim's pockets, the picture of spiritual greatness remains vivid in our 1ninds. True, gadlus cannot be quantified. In fact, it can barely be defined. But it may perhaps be in place to put to paper one's personal recollections and impressions. We knew Rcb Aharon as the Adam Gadol, the great man-as the Rosh Yeshiva-and as the Manhig Hador, the generation's pre-e1ninent leader of our People, a People whose genius it has always been that its leaders were both sages and saints. But the facets of Reb Aharon's personality are not divisible. He was all three at once. And as all three he dominated the building of Torah in America, and illuminated his age. The Rosh Yeshiva During the waning days of the year 5700-as Torah Jewrv lVas e1nitting its last dying breath on the European Continent, an undisputed leader of his age, Hagaon Reb Chaim Ozer Grodzenski, found solace, as he told Reh Elchonon Wasser111an: "Reh Aharon will HORAV AHARON KOTLER i!~1::l7 j?'il 1';7 was born in Svis· build Torah in America." Jovitz, White Russia, in 5652 ( 1891) and passed away in Brooklyn, New York, on 2 Kislev, 5723. J)uring his EE AHARON WAS FIRST AND FOREMOST THE ROSH years in Europe-as Rosh Yeshiva in Kletzk, and his R YESHIVA. He was known to the world as "the later years in America-as Rosh Yeshiva in Bais Med· Rosh Yeshiva," and it was as such that he rosh Gevoha, in Lakewood, New Jersey, he was a addressed himself to the problems of the Kial. From dominant Torah personality. his conviction that the purpose of Israel is the study of Torah, he saw the yeshivos as the consummation of This article, presented during the season of Shavuos, the Divine Will and the salvation of Kial Yisroel. the Festival of Receiving the Torah, is excerpted from In the words of a leading contemporary, wherever un appreciation of Rcb Aharon written by RABRI SHAUL Reb Aharon would have been there would have been KAGAN, a longtime talmid in Bais Medrosh Gevoha. a yeshiva. For Reb Aharon was not a Rosh Yeshiva The Jewish Observer I May, 1973 3 by choice, certainly not by profession, but out of exertion on behalf of Torah and Kial, radiating joy at simple existential condition. Thus, Reb Aharon went his return to the welJspring of his existence, never about the spiritual wastelands of America with the failing to express the hope that the next week he would Torah-not unlike the Holy One, Blessed be He, be able to return earlier.... Who went from nation to nation before Sinai-facing rejection after rejection: "Rabbi, please don't bother The Nature of Torah us," "Rabbi, you're wasting your time," till the force an<l the Shape of the Yeshiva of his convictions and the urgency of his message finally REH AHARON WOULD TELL ba'alei batim (lay leaders): prevailed-many of his detractors becoming his "The purpose of the Yeshiva is not the Roshei Yeshivos staunchest supporters. or Rabbonim or educators that it produces, but simply Reb Aharon transcended the walls of his own the development of true bnei 1'orah, versed not only Yeshiva and was the Rosh Yeshiva of all yeshivas: in the fundamentals of Torah but in the fundamental Jn the early days of the war he was a leading spirit nature of Torah, to whom Torah is the throb and pulse in the hatzala (rescue) effort to save the fleeing of life. The Yeshiva is the repository of the masoras, re1nnants of the European yeshivos, who were later to securing the future of Torah and of Kial Yisroel." breathe life into the American and Israeli yeshivos .... In truth, Reb Aharon's every activity, on both the Jn 1948, during and after the fighting in Eretz Yisroel, personal and co1nmunal level, pulsated with his total the yeshivos there were on the verge of financial identification with 'forah, but it was as Rosh Yeshiva collapse. In spite of the severe financial condition of that he consciously taught Torah, the nature of Torah his own Yeshiva, Reb Aharon was a pri1nary force in and the approach to Torah. raising over $100,000 for them in several weeks ... Thus Reb Aharon in his role as Rosh Yeshiva conics Ile was the founder and pillar of Chinuch Atzmai .. clearly into focus through an understanding of his a major power in "Tashbar" . chairman of the concept of the nature of Torah itself-as he sensed Rabbinical Council of Torah Umesorah-and the list it, embodied it, and conveyed it. goes on. If a Rosh Yeshiva is by definition one who "Torah," Reb Aharon used to say, "is above perpetuates and disseminates Torah, then Reb Aharon time and space, and if the An1erican context is was indeed the Rosh Yeshiva of Kial Yisroel. And not cause for undermining Torah's integrity, in the broadest sense, in that Reb Aharon was a fina1 neither does it give reason to alter the character arbiter of dews Torah, all of Israel may be said to of the yeshiva." Form follows function and both have sat at his feet, with Reb Aharon as its Rosh must be as unalterable as the Torah itself. And Yeshiva. he cast the yeshiva in its classic mold. That Special Energy "Torah," Reb Aharon taught, "is the purpose and goal of Creation, the destiny of the Jew-the IN HIS EFFORTS FOR TORAH, Reb Aharon knew no highest form of worship and the consummation of fatigue, as he knew no fatigue in his efforts to breathe. the Divine Will; both the means and the ends We re1nember Reb Aharon in continuing motion of human fulfillment. Through Torah alone man from early morning to late in the night-without food, unites with his Creator-for G-d and His word \Vithout respite. He was in fact frail-but powered are one. Through Torah, 1nan rises above the by a special spiritual grace: rallying support for his ordinary to the sublime, the mundane to the Yeshiva, for Chinuch Atzmai, for Agudath Israel, spiritual, the profane to the Holy, and finally. n1eeting the demands of whatever crisis faced cforah mortality to i1nmortality." Jewry, Reb Aharon was the Yissochor and Zevulun­ "Torah is greater than the su1n of rnitz·vos-its source of both material needs and spiritual sustenance. commandments. It is the source from where the We remember Reb Aharon saying the shiyur ( lec­ kedusha of the 1nitzvos flows; the 1nitzvos being ture) despite a high fever; and an older student recalls the essential means whereby man sanctifies his Reh Aharon delivering a shiyur in his Yeshiva in Kletsk body and soul to absorb the Torah itself; the -a presentation of several hours' duration-coughing purifying effect of Torah in turn expands the blood, but proceeding with the same sparkle, concen­ dimensions of his 1nitzvos, increasing his absorp­ tration. and verve as ever. The Torah energized Reb tive capacity for Torah, ad infinituni." Aharon, replenishing his vigor, "the Ark carrying its Reh Aharon once expressed hi111self to this lrriter, bearer." And we remember Reb Aharon in his final ivith a laugh, that there are those lvho consider the illness-semi-conscious-words of 1·orah pouring from study of Torah as a mere mitzvahi comparable to other llis lips.
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